Traditional porous carbon materials are derived from coal, wood, biomass, or polymers. These carbons are typically microporous, and are formed from defects caused by heteroatoms eliminated during carbonization. Microporous carbons are often inadequate in terms of conductivity, mass transport, and structural integrity due to the remaining heteroatoms, restricted flow pathways, and lack of structural control. These deficiencies can be resolved by the introduction of mesoporosity, which make them ideal for catalysis, batteries, supercapacitors, and adsorbents. Mesoporous carbons that can be tailored to optimize these applications are in high demand.
The standard templating synthesis utilizes methods that can be both costly and hazardous on the industrial scale. For instance, hard-templating of mesoporous carbon involves using a sacrificial silica template in combination with a carbon precursor, in which the template is etched after carbonization with harsh acids or bases (i.e. HF, NaOH) and a carbon inverse replica is revealed. Soft-templating synthesis tends to be less severe and is based on a self-assembly approach using block copolymer templating agents, which are removed via carbonization. The block copolymer agents can be synthetically intensive to produce, which makes it very costly. While both of these methods produce well-defined mesopore size distributions and morphologies, they lack a facile route for mesopore development and a cost effective porogen that is relinquished by the process for industrial scale viability.